What have I done since I last wrote over one thousand words about Murphy’s testicles? I hesitate to share another cat-related anecdote, but since I now have three of them there are lots more to share. We had another wallet-draining vet visit; this time for Rocko to get some teeth removed. Besides being fat and crazy, Rocko has a serious case of meth mouth and this is actually his second dental surgery. No more after this, I swear. He is too damn old and he will just have to go to the Sky Litterbox with the pitifully few teeth he has left.Everything went well except that Murphy lost his dumb little mind when Rocko returned from the surgery. He was hissing and screeching and basically acting like he had never seen this cat before in his life. It got better, but VERY slowly, and it was making us all bananas so I asked the vet’s advice during the follow-up phone call. She said to get some dirty laundry and rub it on him, since Murphy was most likely reacting to the surgery-smell.So let’s recap: you are minding your own business on the couch when someone grabs you, locks you up in a small box, and takes you to the dentist. There you are knocked out with anesthesia and wake up minus two teeth. Once home, your roommate follows you around and screams in your face for a few days. Then every time you lie down for a nap, one of your other roommates sneaks up with a fistful of dirty underpants and rubs them all over your body, saying, “Hold still, I’m trying to HELP you.” Oh Rocko. It is hard to be you. TWO TERRIBLE THINGS
* I discovered a small hole in the sleeve of my favorite sweater. Now I have $200 worth of Everlane cashmere sitting in a cart while I dither about spending that much on my own carcass-coverings right before Christmas.
* I was forced to go to a “leadership” seminar where I became intensely irritated by the presenter using many stock photos of gears. Hi, I know I am naught but a cog in a vast and brutal machine, but you don’t have to make it explicit while you waste my time in a conference room. That’s just plain rude. FOUR BETTER THINGS
* I get to host Thanksgiving this year. Am I super-organized right now? No. Do I have some time off work to shop, cook, make spreadsheets, and mobilize the team? Yes. Menu is done (heavy on the sides), turkey is on its way from some New York farm, and most importantly, wine has been purchased. I am (uncharacteristically) going to stay away from the wine while cooking, but once plates are full and secular toasts have been said? It is ON. I want my blood to be about 70% Shiraz by pie time.
* The kid and I have a standing date to watch and MST3K the shit out of _Riverdale_, which is the bestworstbestworstworst crappy teen soap opera I have ever seen. I am still looking for the chance to drop some of this unbelievable teen dialogue into conversation. I am also a fan of how characters constantly sit down to plates of food that they never, ever touch, and of how supposedly-present-day teenagers are always referencing pop culture from the 1990s. That last bit may be a shout out to the parents who are watching this piece of crap, since the show also features actors from our era (Mark Consuelos, Luke Perry, Molly Ringwald) as parents themselves. Oh man, it’s bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. Do not attempt to watch without either a loaded bong or a sarcastic teenager at your side.
* Speaking of my child, we ran another 5K together and got our best time ever, and I very much appreciated the willingness to stick by my old slow side and not shoot for an even better time. It was cold but there were people dressed as turkeys and pleasant scenery so those things helped. I used to hate running so much but now? Anything to slow down the decay of my decrepit meatsack.
* If you’re not in Chicago, you may not know about Eddie Olzcyk, who is a former Blackhawks player turned Blackhawks announcer, and is pretty involved with youth hockey--if your kid plays you have probably met him in person more than once. His foundation gives aways something called the Eddie Olzcyk award. It is a grant to deserving hockey programs but every year I amuse myself by pretending that it is an award given to the person who most resembles Eddie Olzcyk, and every year he awards it to himself. “Once again, the recipient of the Eddie Olzcyk award is me, Eddie Olzcyk!” It is the most private of private jokes: from me to me. But now I guess also to you. THE TRASH HEAP HAS SPOKENI don’t really believe in hunches or premonitions, because to me those are the same as dreams: a bunch of leftover crumbs and lint for your brain-Roomba to trundle around in and hoover up. Because your brain-Roomba is essentially a Meaningful Narrative Machine, it tries to put them in some sort of order, and that’s why people are all like THE UNIVERSE IS TELLING ME A THING. The universe does not give a _shit_, homie. Empty out your brain-Roomba’s dust cup and let’s move on. That said, the other day I woke up with a very strong thought and that was, “Trump is gone by February.” Let’s grasp at straws! MAYBE???? I don’t really care if it’s impeachment or stroking out on the toilet but to be brutally honest I sort of hope for the latter, because Twitter will be unbearable if there are impeachment proceedings. Or maybe that should be “more” unbearable. HA HA I’M A RIOT. I love to bitch about internet platforms that allow me to share my stupid jokes and half-assed ideas widely and for free, and where I can post side-by-side with verified Nazis oops there I go again. --mimi smartypants in way more than 140 280 characters.

FAT KIDS SKINNY KIDS KIDS WHO CLIMB ON ROCKSI was fretting and stressing and nearly weeping with anxiety (more on this in a minute), so I decided to not eat sad crackers at my desk but to instead lunch on life-affirming meat and fat. I took myself to Portillo’s for my newest heart-attack go-to, the Chicago hot dog and those lovely crinkled fries. I’m not vegetarian anymore, and sometimes I_ really_ want to underscore that fact. With a hot dog. Some things I saw at Portillo’s:
* An adult man with 2 chili dogs, a beer, and three small cartons of milk. I stayed far away from him, just like I would stay far away from any unstable chemical situation.
* An older man who seemed to be leading a tour group on their Portillo’s trip, it was a big table near me and as they ate he was giving them all sorts of nonsensical and often frankly wrong Chicago-based “facts.” (The World’s Fair was not in 1926; you have your choice of 1893 or 1933 depending on whether you want the more famous Columbian Exposition or that Century of Progress thing; some cool organized crime shit happened in 1926 but no World’s Fairs.) My favorite was when he didactically said, “This beef is prepared ‘hot and sweet,’ which means they dipped it in Italian juice.” ITALIAN JUICE!
* One of the thinnest women I have ever seen methodically and somewhat grimly eating a whole lot of cheese fries and reading a _New Yorker_. I admit to entertaining some Dark Thoughts but then remembered that the majority of bulimics I have known (now THAT is a sad phrase) were a normal weight. Then I ordered myself to stop thinking about things like that, it is not good karma or a feminist act and no one knows another person’s Cheese Fry Reasons.OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER ABOUT HOW NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S DREAMSBut I liked this one and want to record it: I dreamed I was reading a _New York Times _book review of a book of poems titled _Stupid, I Awaken_. Much of the review was about the ambiguity in the title. Did the speaker wake up stupid? Are they calling you stupid? Anyway, I think it’s a great title and I bequeath it to any poet who reads this. EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER THREAT LEVEL: KITTEN BALLSLast entry, we were hotly debating whether Murphy, whose shelter paperwork indicates that he was neutered as per standard procedure, still had balls. LT thought: yes, there are balls on Murphy cat. I thought: ridiculous, how can you forget to neuter a kitten, it says neutered right there on the intake form. The internet thought: mmmmm, maybe, but probably no, and sometimes the empty ballsack hangs around and fools everyone into thinking there are balls. (O ye olde wily ballsack!) Eventually we got tired of talking about this. Rocko was scheduled for his yearly Rocko exam at the cat doctor, so on impulse I packed Murphy up as well and brought him along. I figured I would just take the Embarrassment Hit and ask the vet ARE THERE BALLS ON THIS CAT?Surprise! The answer was yes! I wanted Murphy-kitten neutered YESTERDAY. The other two cats are also strictly indoor (and NEUTERED, as per ADOPTION PROTOCOL), so there’s no one Murphy can impregnate, but if he were to start spraying foul tomcat liquid around my home he would quickly become a lot less adorable. The way I saw it, the shelter owed me a neutering, so I gave them a call and left a message. The woman who called me back was pretty shruggy about everything. Shit happens. Testicle-removal sometimes doesn’t happen. Whatever. She offered me a discount at the low-cost spay/neuter clinic they run. Which is:
* Very far away from my house. Someone’s going to have to eat a vacation day to drive there twice (dropoff and pickup).
* Doesn’t take appointments.* Online advice is to “get there early--like 6:30 am--so you can be the first to be called for intake.” Ugh.
* Has several unsettling stories posted online about pets who had awful complications after going there. This is a grain-of-salt situation, since trouble-free experiences usually don’t result in online reviews. But. *Side note: I am glad this low-cost spay/neuter clinic exists, don’t get me wrong. But one thing that has always made me mad is that these sliding-scale/low-cost/social-service type places really, REALLY do not respect people’s time. Poor people not only have to be poor, but they also have to waste hours traveling on multiple city buses to clinics and food pantries, where they get to sit and wait for a number to be called. Shit that should take an hour or so, like getting your kid a vaccination or signing up for food stamps, takes all day. Or multiple days. And then conservatives wonder why poor people are not spending all day looking for work? MOTHERFUCKER THEY ARE SPENDING ALL DAY DOING EVERYTHING ELSE. It is extra little unfair icing on an already unfair cake.)I decided to forgo this opportunity and just pay for the neutering to be done at my usual vet. Yes, I am a rotten princess aristocrat, please email me allllll about it.We dropped Murphy off in the morning and went to work. Mid-day, I got a call from the ball surgeon. During the pre-op exam, they found that Murphy has a heart murmur. It could be nothing; it could be serious. (The very best kind of medical problem!) This means that anesthesia of any kind is more dangerous and this call is for me to be “informed of the risks.” She was also doing that doctor thing of not being reassuring at all. Here were the options:1. Go to a cat cardiologist and get an extremely expensive cardiac ultrasound, come back another time for neutering.2. Full ball-surgery speed ahead!3. Do the neutering today, but add extra monitoring and special gold-plated anesthesia etc ($$$$$$).I went with option 3, but didn’t feel great about it, especially when I had to give authorization for them to resuscitate Murphy on the table should something terrible happen.Then I went to Portillo’s and ate a hot dog and cried a little. This has a happy ending, Murphy pulled through just fine and is now kittenishly running around the house wondering why he has a shaved leg. (It’s from the IV, Murphy. The whaaaat? By the way, my balls feel weird! WHAT ARE YOU EATING CAN I HAVE SOME????) The vet still recommends we get the ultrasound to find out what’s up with his little cat heart, and…I’ll think about it. It seems like it might be the kind of thing that can only give you bad news. And we also might want to let my credit card cool off a little first. By the way, we found out that besides the heart thing, Murphy also has a little bit of an itchy rash on his leg (they recommended a brand of hypoallergenic litter), and iffy gum tissue (they recommended brushing the cat’s teeth, oh joy!) I feel a special bond because I too have not-great gums, allergies, and a minor heart condition (that thing that makes me faint in inconvenient places all over town). My god what a CAT BALL SAGA. How much do cat testicles weigh? Because I’m pretty sure Murphy’s have cost me more than an equivalent amount of cocaine. He came from the streets (of Cicero, according to the intake form, which is possibly is not to be believed) (since it also claims a neutering occurred), but now he’s my million-dollar baby.Now I wish there were an appropriate _Raging Bull _quote I could apply to this entry, just to hit the trifecta of boxing-movie references. --mimi smartypants ain’t no bum.

* Appreciated: the supreme gentleness with which a Starbucks employee handed me back my travel mug, its interior festooned with a crumpled kleenex I had not noticed while giving my order, and the even more supreme gentleness with which he asked, “Would you…like…to…take that out of there?” I wish I had had the balls to say No. Complete with steely-eyed glare: No. I want that IN there, young man. I want you to pour the coffee right on top of that kleenex. How dare you question how I take my coffee.
* Iceland! I am going to force you to look at some photos. They were almost all taken by my kid with a stupid point-and-shoot, and look how good! Should a “real” camera be under the tree this year?
_
* We had fun driving around, stopping to gawk at ridiculously beautiful natural scenes (seriously, one gets Beauty Fatigue after a few days) and to yell at sheep to get out of the road. LT did all the driving, which is more fatiguing than Midwest American driving given the twisty changes in elevation and how you are often passing sheer dropoffs INTO THE SEA with a Scandinavian handwave-y attitude about things like guardrails. Also the sheep. I did all the navigating and cross-referencing guidebooks with maps and signs and the old-school in-car GPS unit. The teen sat in the back and made time-lapse road videos and told us when to pull over and photograph stuff.
* All the hotels were small and cute and in the middle of nowhere. I kept imagining a blue-and-yellow IKEA helicopter airdropping a “hotel kit,” like it was United Nations food aid.
* Travel is good for learning things about yourself. Like my family’s tendency to just hop out of the car and start hiking around without anyone really considering a Plan. Luckily you can’t get too lost in a national park with well-marked hiking trails, but let’s just say some hikes were a bit…longer than anticipated.
* Iceland food is nothing to write home about, unless you like writing letters about really fresh fish. We ate a strange amount of pizza. Just about every restaurant, no matter what else it served, seemed to also serve pizza. Some of the pizza had lobster on it, so at least that’s something.
* LT did try a horrid liquor there and brought some home to haze people with. Don’t come to my house for a few weeks, at least until he forgets about it.
* Got back 2 days before my child started HIGH SCHOOL oh help. Bitch-Slapped By Time: The Mimi Smartypants Story_. First day, the kid came home shell-shocked and near tears. Turns out that nine years of attendance at an incredibly small, one-class-per-grade, K-8 school with a very stable population is not necessarily the best preparation for a large urban high school, especially when you add in terrifying variables like “changing for gym.” Never mind the fact that everyone is enormous and older than you and a stranger. We did an evening of backrubs and brownies, and I hoped things would improve.
* Fast-forward to the fourth day, when I get a text at work asking if it’s okay to get bubble tea with X and Y and Z on the walk home from school. Well. That didn’t take long.
* School seems pretty on top of parent communication. I don’t mind lots of emails but I could do without the robocalls that are in both English and Spanish. On the other hand, since I never answer the phone, I get to read the awesome Google Voice transcriptions of them. Yesterday’s call transcription included this gem: “If depressed, cinco cinco triscuits.” You know it, sister.
* (Please bear with me a moment as I write about cat testicles.)
* We adopted Murphy from a shelter. His kitten paperwork indicates that he was neutered shortly after being found with the rest of his litter on the street. The scribbled vet notes are a little hard to read, but it does say the type of anesthesia and all the right “neutering” boxes are checked.
* The problem is that, as he grows bigger, Murphy seems to have…balls. Or does he? Could he have, like, little ball stumps or something? Could the things that look an awful lot like balls be anal glands, or some other unspeakable part of the cat with which I am not familiar? I mean, it’s impossible that he still has balls, between the paperwork and two different vet visits, right? Someone would have said something? IF YOU SEE SOMETHING (BALLS), SAY SOMETHING (HOLY SHIT, BALLS).
* I seriously do not want to haul a perfectly healthy young cat into the vet just to be told that we are imagining his testicles. My vet is pretty cool about answering questions over the phone, so I am entertaining the notion of trying to get a picture of (what may be) Murphy’s balls and emailing it to her. Obvious problems: (1) getting a 6-month-old kitten to be still for a testicle photo; (2) having a photo labeled something like “possible cat testicles” uploaded to my Google cloud. The overlords at Google will tag me as an undesirable element and I’ll be banished forever. --mimi smartypants danced this mess around.

I saw a guy’s Twitter profile that said, “Horse dad.” Possibilities:
* His son is a horse
* His daughter is a horse
* He is a horse (not in the picture, but maybe a werehorse or maybe it’s not his picture) (and he has children)
* He has a pet horse he loves very much and considers himself its dad
* His children ride him like a horse often and gave him a nickname
* He’s a masculine, dominant gay “daddy” who nonetheless enjoys flipping the script and being ridden like a horse or maybe just has a stallion-sized something IYKWIM(AITYD)
* Something elseThis will probably be the last time I write before we leave for Iceland, yes I’m going to Iceland just like every other basic bitch. Every other travel blog = LOOK AT ME IN ICELAND and I am going to walk on the glacier like everyone else. But that’s okay because it is also going to be awesome. We are going to rent a car and drive around and see a whale (hello, whale) and not eat fermented shark or sheep lung. I am not sure what we are going to eat, actually, given the semi-pickiness of the teen. Probably a lot of fish and chips, and I personally am hoping for weird varieties of jerky and crackers to eat in the car. I am also looking forward to the brevity of the air travel. Six hours, that’s nothing! I have sedatives and I have also flown directly from Chicago to Beijing: I fear no air travel! (Actually I fear a lot, about takeoff. But after that I just pretend I am in a weird bus.)It’s actually a slightly terrible time to leave work for a long-ish vacation, but when is it not. One hilarious dilemma is that supposedly directors (like me) will get the information needed to submit our budget requests the day before I leave, and budgets are due the day I get back. I may finally do what I have always wanted: forgo all the forecasting and twiddling and planning and number-crunching and just put really big numbers in all the columns. Just see what happens. Another reason it could be deadly to go on this vacation right now: I am in a period of work-depression and increasingly having fantasies of Not. I want to stay home and make things lovely in a way that I never wanted to when the kid was small. It makes no sense because the teen has a house key, a transit card, and earbuds in most of the day, and hardly requires Mommy’s Loving Presence for long periods of time.What would I even do, if not work? I already cook most nights, but I guess I could cook…more? Or more elaborately? I could exercise at off-peak hours? I could start and follow up on the dozens of home renovation projects on my list? I could nap properly every day, rather than just resting my eyes like a business woman?Like I said, this is a very stupid fantasy for many reasons, and I can’t help but notice that in it I seem to have the same amount of income we’ve always had, to make the aforementioned home renovations and such. I WISH IT TO LEAVE MY HEAD. I WISH TO BECOME A PERFECT WORKER ROBOT UNTIL RETIREMENT OR DEATH (WHICHEVER COMES FIRST.) Anyway. Look for me on Twitter for the next few weeks, where I am sure I will quickly become insufferable due to my love for insanely long place names like Eyjafjallajökull. -mimi smartypants she don’t lie she don’t lie she don’t lie (cocaine).

IF I WERE A JOURNALISTFirst, if you’re the type of journalist who goes to press conferences and gets to yell out questions, and you’re not walking around 24/7 in a hat with paper “PRESS” credentials sticking out of the band, I don’t know what you are doing with your journalist life.Second, I would not be able to resist attempting to trap spokespersons into DEEZ NUTS jokes. Mimi Smartypants from _Nutsack News_, thank you for taking my question. Senator, what do you think will be the effect of the BOFA regulations on our trade relationship with Canada? Hey Bono, what do you think of Imagine Dragons well Imagine DEEZ NUTS draggin’ across your stupid face HEY LET GO OF ME *gets dragged out by U2’s jackbooted thugs* I am not a journalist but I am a valued member of the media! I know this because I keep getting emails at my work account from U-Haul’s corporate headquarters that announce the opening of a new U-Haul rental location. These come from Corey Decker, “External Communications Intern.” (If that’s not a title to make one weep, I don’t know what is.) They ask me to please consider posting or publishing the attached press release, which “includes all of the necessary business details” and “U-Haul photos for [my] convenience.” I’m supposed to let Corey know if I need anything else, because he or she can send me additional photos or even arrange an interview with the location’s owner or a local U-Haul representative BE STILL MY HEART. When I contact Corey for those additional photos, I should probably also include some sensitive and motherly words of comfort about the now is not the forever, keeping one’s chin up, and how “External Communications Intern” is only the first step in what will no doubt eventually be a long and fulfilling life and career. Courage, Corey Decker. It gets better. I THREATENED IT ON TWITTER, AND THEN I WENT AND DID IT IN REAL LIFEI did a weird thing, recently, a first for me. I got fed up with my dry bumpy back and arm skin and booked something called a “lime and ginger salt scrub treatment” at a spa. I fully expected this to be awkward and weird, but it was actually really chill and nice. You’re never more naked than one limb at a time, there are candles and warmed towels, and you get oiled and massaged and scrubbed with salt just like a chicken getting ready for the roasting pan. (Put some rosemary between my skin and my fat layer! Tuck my wings under! Put a lemon in my cavity no wait don’t do that part.)After all that you get to take a shower of sorts, only you are LYING DOWN (my favorite position) and someone else is doing all the work (my favorite way of accomplishing things). My only complaint was the vocal-heavy easy-listening music in the treatment room--I would have preferred either classic whooshy tinkly relaxation music or regular old smooooooth jazz, but overall the whole experience was wicked nice. And it was a good scared-white-lady baby step toward my ultimate goal, which is to get brave enough to go to one of those wacky Korean centers where burly grandmas scrub all your dead skin off right there in a public space. Someday. FROG PANTSYou should know about my (genetic haplogroup) countryman, Lazzaro Spallanzani, who did a many good experiments but is probably most famous for putting cute little taffeta pants on some male frogs and observing that the pants stop them from jizzing on the frog eggs. You can read a more direct source here. I like this sentence:

I moreover observed, that an obtuse tumid point, that I suspected to be the penis, was elongated…but I could not perceive any emission from this supposed penis.

Sick burn on that frog penis! “Supposed,” indeed. FROG SEZ STFUHOW CAN YOU NOT REALIZE THISAlthough now I can take or leave (and mostly leave) the Beatles, as a kid, I really liked the Rubber Soul album. I used to borrow my dad’s vinyl copy and was very fond of belting out “You Won’t See Me” in my room with stuffed animals providing imaginary harmony. I also liked “Norwegian Wood” and got a dark little proto-goth chuckle about its ending, where the singer clearly burns down the girl’s house. What? That wasn’t your interpretation of that last line about lighting a fire? I always pictured the rejected-for-sex arsonist snickering, “Isn’t it good” as flames engulfed the building. Then I mentioned that to someone, in a “everyone knows this” kind of way and he thought I was nuts. If it’s not true, then the song REALLY sucks because that was pretty much its main redeeming quality in my mind. --mimi smartypants is non-venomous and harmless to humans.

WHO KNEW? NOT YOUEpistemologically speaking, “I never knew that,” is the weirdest sentence that people say on a regular basis. The other night Nora was in bed, lights out, and I was reading in my bed, and we were occasionally talking across the hall as usual. We both have a bad case of Slumber Party Syndrome. I sneezed. She said my sneeze sounds like a baby mouse (excuse me: RUDE). We both wondered if snakes can sneeze (I bet they can’t, which is too bad because it would probably be hilarious). I told her that horses can’t barf. She said, “Interesting, I never knew that” and drifted off to sleep while I was left to ponder the utter strangeness of “I never knew that.” There’s a time component to it, somehow. You did not just Not Know. You Never Knew. I think I’ve complained about this before, but I have a similar problem with that whole military cadence that starts with, “I don’t know but I’ve been told.” How do you not know? You were told! Maybe the teller is unreliable and you don’t yet believe. Maybe it takes a while to sink in. Maybe you wonder if we can ever really “know,” no matter how often we are told. Side note: as a little kid, I remember hearing the “Left. Left. Left Right Left” marching thing and wondering how the hell that worked. Put your left foot forward; put it a little more forward; put it even MORE forward; and then walk normally? I clearly remember it dawning on me MUCH later that the “right” was just being rhythmically omitted in the first part. I was a very smart child but not a clever one.NEW ENGLANDMy work trip to Boston was pretty good. I went here and here and here (where I had one of the best cheese + meat boards of my life) and a few other places, got a manicure (rare) on a slow-to-start conference day, and learned some shit and saw some cool software demos and flopped around in my giant hotel king bed every night. My only snag was on the way home, when the TSA guy checked my traveling papers and said, “Have a safe journey,” and I reflexively said, “You too.” Two steps away I realized the error so I had to turn around and yell, “I mean, in LIFE!” WHY MUST YOU BE WRONG ALL THE TIMEI am on a new program of ignoring Facebook as much as possible. There are too many infuriating bits of it, and I can either spend the energy to unfollow and curate or I can just try to rarely go there. It’s weird, FB is mostly “I know you all in real life and YOU DRIVE ME BANANAS,”* whereas Twitter is, “1200 people I have never met and I LOVE YOU ALL WITH MY WHOLE HEART.” *If you know me on Facebook, I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about the other people. You know, the annoying people. I’m just sick of the echo-chamber virtue signaling (Look! I care about the poor! I hate Trump! Wow, JOIN THE CLUB OF HUMANITY), the #blessed #gratitude, the ads. It’s a good spot to share photos but that is about it. My disgust has been deepening for a while, but got worse recently when I got sucked into responding to a dumbshit comment about Chicago marijuana being laced with heroin in order to get kids hooked. Now, normally I am wicked good at letting dumbshit stuff flow by, but some dumbshit is just too dumbshit. If you’re going to bust out with a defense of homeopathy or how the moon is actually a giant baked potato, I am going to have to say something. And if you’re going to claim that “a cop” told you that drug dealers--who are known more for their desire to make the most money in the shortest time than for their complex, diabolical plots--are taking one of the cheapest drugs out there and somehow adulterating it with something more expensive, and then selling the result at the cheap-thing price? I’m going to say no. That is not true. This one was especially perplexing, not just because it doesn’t make economic sense, but because it doesn’t even make physical sense. Have you ever purchased marijuana? It is a plant. It arrives fresh from the dealer in tight embryonic shoots that are often referred to as “buds,” because that is what they are. Have you seen or purchased heroin? It can look many different ways, but one thing it does not look like is marijuana. What, you get your quarter-ounce of leaves and buds and there’s a weird white powder in the bag too? There’s a chunky brownish-black rock just sort of hanging out in there? Or are you suggesting that the dealer cooks up the heroin into a liquid and sprays it on the marijuana somehow? No, because (a) that would be a pain in the ass and (b) it would make more sense just to sell the heroin at heroin prices and sell the weed at weed prices and not mix them up. Some people like Pepsi Max (heroin), some people like Coke Zero (weed). IT’S A SEGMENTED MARKETPLACE, YO.The person I was arguing with was smarter than me (well, not about the microeconomics of dealing drugs, but about arguing on the internet), because they sensibly dropped the matter after a few attempts to defend this ridiculous claim, whereas I should have never even responded to that nonsense in the first place. I guess we know now what makes me mad! People getting their drug facts wrong!POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCEN graduates 8th grade next week, and I have been warned that the ceremony will take about 2 hours--whaaaaaaaaat? Don’t get me wrong, I am proud of my little potato, but it’s not like I was expecting her to drop out and go work in the coal mine or go be a performance artist in New York. Completing 8th grade was not really up for negotiation. Over text:Nora: We need to pick a class song. Me: I choose “Siamese Twins” by The Cure!N: What even is that. Me: Here are some lyrics

Dancing in my pocket Worms eat my skin She glows and grows With arms outstretched Her legs around me

N: It has to be appropriateN: And like, uplifting, or somethingMe: “Black and Yellow”! Wiz Khalifa!N: …Me: It’s about a man who is very successful![no more replies after this]--mimi smartypants, trainspotter.

SPORTS: YOU CAN SKIP THIS PARAGRAPHI have been quite transfixed by NHL playoffs this year, despite the dreadful showing of the home team (seriously, the Predators and their boring-but-effective neutral-zone-trap thing could not have been a worse match for Chicago). I do like a nice Game 7, no matter who the players are, just for the drama. I am mildly rooting for Ottawa. Penguins are a great animal but they were in it last year and it’s time to mix things up. HOWEVER. It will always bug me that the Ottawa “Senators” have a Roman general as their logo. I suppose legati were TECHNICALLY members of the Senate, you got me there, but it also seems like a lazy play on “centurion,” and it’s not like a legatus would show up at the Senate in full battle gear. He’d likely look like a guy in a toga on Senate days. But no team wants a guy in a toga as their logo. Also! The Ottawa Senators have a mascot called “Sparticat.” It is a weird ugly lion thing with oddly straight “hair” like Ozzy Osbourne, and why are we suddenly dragging SPARTA into this? Do we need to fly some Classics scholars to Ottawa to help get this mess figured out? AMAZON IS ON TO MEMy basement smelled kind of weird and it was bothering me. It’s just a basement and of course there’s a drain and litter boxes and laundry and beer-brewing supplies down there, so maybe I could have just dealt with it. Basements are gonna basement. But it was bothering me so I started researching solutions to smells. One thing you should know about me is that if I’m going to spend money I like to get the “best” whatever it is. Not in a flashy way--I’m not into designers or bling. (Yes, Mimi, we figured that out when you rolled up to the Target in your Toyota Camry.) But I can get very focused on reading reviews and figuring out what’s Best In Its Category, no matter how small the purchase. So when I wanted to make the basement smell better I naturally drilled down into different smell solutions, sorting by “Average Customer Review,” which is how I ended up getting a bucket of weird deodorizing crystals that I must admit are highly effective. The basement smells much better!After I bought the MAGICAL CRYSTAL BUCKET, I noticed some funny stuff showing up in the “recommended for you” part of Amazon. Things like hydroponic gardening materials. And grow lights. And motion-detection cameras, and plant food. Then I Googled the crystal-smell-bucket some more and found that most of its purchasers were using it to cover of the smell of their home marijuana-growing operations. Oh, okay. THINGS I AM SO PICKY ABOUT THAT I HAVE NO CLEAR ANSWER AS TO WHETHER I LIKE THEM OR NOT
* Tomatoes. Sauce is okay, very finely diced and fresh is okay, the firmer grape or cherry varieties with most of the goop gone is okay, canned is not very okay but I can deal, a slice on a sandwich or a wedge in a salad is not okay at all.
* The blues. I cannot stand the typical loud electric-guitar stuff that gets played for tourists in Chicago. I sort of like the kind on a scratchy 78 that is introduced by a solid minute of an old man coughing.
* Science fiction. There are way too many arguments about what even “counts” as science fiction. I think I mostly DON’T like science fiction, but I often like literature that happens to take place in the future or in a different world. But it has to be highly “literary” first and the other stuff is just the special sauce. So I don’t know. MISCELLANEOUS
* Today I learned that Chinese people sometimes say “eggplant!” so as to appear to smile in pictures. Eggplant is the Chinese cheese (in this context).
* LT and I gave in to nostalgia and saw Jesus and Mary Chain earlier this month. It was pretty good, although it was one of the darkest shows I’ve ever seen. I mean literally dark, I’m not making a gothy statement here. I guess no one really wants to SEE Jesus and Mary Chain. Oh look, there’s some old Scottish dudes. Just play loud and pump up the light show.
* Fourteen years ago, in the last paragraph of this, I blathered about a mini-trend of air travel bands. Lately I have noticed an influx of water-themed bands. Beach House, Beach Fossils, Wavves, Surfer Blood, Poolside, Lagoons, Future Islands, Washed Out, Best Coast. Calling all armchair semioticians to make a mountain out of a band-name molehill!
* I go to Boston next week (work). Most of my time is sadly spoken for, but it’s a big publishing meeting and I know a lot of big publishing nerds read my thing, so if you are there let’s be awkward in a hotel ballroom together. --mimi smartypants has a different name tag.

RE: YOUR EMBARRASSING TRANSACTIONSI don’t know who Jason [LastNameRedacted] is, but I wish I would stop getting fraud and “transaction denied” notifications about his credit card. Somehow his card and my cell phone number have gotten mixed up so at least once a week I get text messages saying, “Did you use card ending in 1234 at…a vape store? At Larry Flynt’s _Hustler_? At Hooters? At a strip club in Joliet?” (Heaven help us.) It seems that Jason is either a real piece of shit or his card was stolen by a real piece of shit; either way it is not my problem. But there is no arguing with a texting robot from the bank.WAKE ME UPIt is allergy season and thus the season of Benadryl dreams. I’ve dreamed about the WNBA, Congressional term limits, a really snarky and hilarious “drain the swamp” joke that I was proud of in the dream but cannot remember now, and a church where the communion wafers were either regular or fish-flavored (parishioner's choice). JUST FOR MEEEEEEEI am a major sucker for “personalized” shit (Stitch Fix, the Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify, Amazon recommendations, etc). That said, there are a lot of very silly companies out there, and there is one that claims to send you a supply of shampoo and conditioner customized for your particular hair. I took their hair quiz just to see how silly it could get, and one of the questions asked me to identify five “goals” for my hair. FIVE HAIR GOALS! I don’t think I have five goals for my career, much less my hair. YOU GET MUMBO _AND_ JUMBO FOR ONE LOW, LOW PRICESomehow, despite being listed as editorial staff on the mastheads of actual science journals, a copy of some kind of new-age book catalog ended up in my work mailbox. Actual mail! In the actual mailbox! These publishers printed this thing in full color, and since each book featured gets a full page with a photo and description, there are also actual humans who devoted portions of their brains to come up with 200 words or so for books with titles like _Crystal Wands for Healing_.There is something for everyone in this catalog: if you’re not into the whole wand thing (so phallocentric!), there is also _Crystal Healing for the Heart_, which provides “stone-supported lessons for applying a heart-centered approach in daily life.” If minerals don’t do it for you but you’ve always wanted to become a SUPER-RACIST SHAMAN, try _White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change_ (oh I see, WHITE spirit animals, well isn’t that special). The author introduction for that one begins this way: “Combining sacred elder lore, science, and her own telepathic dreams…” Hmmmm hey now you can’t just have “science” be the meat between 2 pieces of bullshit bread in that sentence-sandwich. That won’t work at all. My personal favorite is_ The Angelic Origins of the Soul: Discovering Your Divine Purpose_. Look at this crazy cover! This bitch is so sparkly!Its narrative blurb in the catalog is introduced by a series of bullet points, for the pudding-brained spiritual seeker who is also short on time:This book:
* Reveals the connection between the soul and the orders of Angels and provides a roadmap to the realms of Heaven and Hell (Siri: driving directions to the realm of Hell, please.)
* Explains the six stages of Soul Evolution and the Nine Orders of Angels(I do not think you are using the word “evolution” correctly here.)
* Describes the many dimensions between the highest celestial realms and the lower Astral plane and the Genesis Matrix, our angelic place of origin(look, I found a Genesis Matrix on Google!)And if your taste is less spiritual and more paranoid, there is always _Alien World Order: The Reptilian Plan to Divide and Conquer the Human Race_ (includes 16-page color insert!)UNFAIRI was watching a television program about the Bronx Zoo that included a segment about their large male sea lion who was going into “season” and getting super-horny. The staff had to move out all the smaller male sea lions so that he wouldn’t beat their asses because of sexual competition/fragile sea-lion masculinity. That was the point of the segment, but what got me all riled up was the story of how the sea lion came to the zoo in the first place. I guess he was living in the wild and the US Fish and Wildlife Service was considering euthanizing him, because he kept going to where endangered salmon go to spawn, and hanging out there to gobble them up as they passed. To repeat: the government considered KILLING a sea lion because he was SMART AS HELL and I get that the salmon are endangered but god damn. Why should the sea lion be penalized, have you assholes ever heard of the FOOD CHAIN. That’s some bullshit right there. --mimi smartypants plans to divide and conquer the human race.

The Chicago “spring” wind was particularly brutal this morning, as I made my way east to the Scientific Words Factory, and somehow it was hitting my eyes perfectly awfully and causing buckets of tears. So I was that lady stumbling up Kinzie weeping hideously, making the inexpertly-applied, really-too-goth-for-the-office eyeliner even worse. HELLO EVERYONE. I’LL BE FINE. EVENTUALLY. I was actually listening to a fairly sad song as I wept toward work, by a band called Salvia Plath. Besides making me chuckle, that band name makes me think about what a terrible trip-buddy old Sylvia would have been. Can you imagine? It would all be red blood and fire, and flying, and hospitals, and you’d be like damn girl, let’s just relax. Let’s just enjoy. Maybe you could hallucinate some peaceful shit for a change. Reading about Plath is more fun than actually reading Plath (unless it’s her journals, which are wholly awesome, and although I’m not in the “It’s All Ted’s Fault” camp I will never forgive him for destroying the last 2 volumes). I recently read _The Silent Woman_, which is a pretty interesting commentary on biography and memory in itself, and then I re-read parts of _Bitter Fame_. Supposedly that one is meant to leave readers with an impression of what a terrible, vain, angry, badly behaved person Sylvia Plath was--but honestly, I find it hard not to relate. Plath ended it all when she was only 30 years old. THIRTY! Who hasn’t been a narcissistic jackass during the time leading up to 30? Who hasn’t invented a persona, wanted people (whom we had no intention of loving back) to fall in love with us, made a big fat hairy deal out of ourselves? Dear Anne Stevenson: I feel that some slack must be cut. (As an aside, for some reason on this re-reading the frequency and severity of Sylvia’s sinus problems really jumped out at me, and if I were in graduate school and desperately searching for a New Angle I might write a paper. “Barely Daring to Breathe or Achoo: Chronic Rhinosinusitis and the Suicide of Sylvia Plath.”)I was weeping for real at the stupid television the other day, though, when stupid Animal Planet saw fit to rope me in with the story of two mother-rejected and hand-reared tiger cubs, and how the zookeepers loved them, and then they grew up and went into the regular tiger exhibit and no more cuddles, no more hanging out with tigers, and the zookeepers were sad about it. They didn’t play “Landslide” in the background but they might as well have. TIME MAKES YOU BOLDER/EVEN TIGERS GET OLDER. You’re killing me, Animal Planet. OTHER THINGS
* I was just in San Francisco and although I had great cocktails/bar falafel and a great bookstore binge with Twitter pal @princesslambchop, I did not have a burrito and now I am sort of regretting that. Not that Chicago is hurting for burritos, and I have eaten SF burritos in the past, but I wanted to add some new files to my mental data bank of Burrito Comparisons. My next work trip will be Boston. Not sure if it’s worthwhile to hunt for burritos in Boston. I sure wouldn’t mind going back here, though.
* Tonight I will be at work forever, since “work” includes a dinner out with an editorial board. Pro: free wine. Con: free wine while wearing bra and pants and smiling at people, instead of at home on my couch. Then I get to snooze for a few hours and be back at work before the sun rises for the actual meeting of said editorial board, and it all feels very NOT FAIR. I see an extra-long lunch hour shimmering on the horizon.
* We had a substitute in my TRX class, and she was your typical totally-pumped fitness instructor type who walked up to the group and said, “All right! Y’all ready to get your strap on?” The best part is that it took her over a minute to figure out why we were all laughing. Are we still doing “phrasing”? Because holy cow, phrasing!
* Everything seemed to me tainted with a loathsome contagion, and inspired by a noxious alliance with the steamed chicken. --mimi smartypants is hanging with a cool bunch.

PENNY TILE / IS ON MY FLOORS / AND IN MY EYES / (OW)Our bathroom remodel is done! Huzzah! I would show you pictures because I’m so proud of all my hard work and backbreaking labor my ability to browse Houzz.com, point at things I like, and write checks to contractors, but we still haven’t figured out a window treatment (our neighbors have done nothing wrong, and do not deserve to be shocked by our nudity). Right now there is a towel blocking the nudity view, and it does not make for a classy picture. But otherwise! It’s grand! Most importantly, we are no longer a one-bathroom family. I know at least one person will write to me with a tale of how they grew up with 17 people sharing a toilet and yes, remodeling-related inconveniences are the first-worldiest of first-worldly problems, but it did kind of suck. There are only 2 other people sharing my house but one is an inconvenient pooper and the other likes to take 90-minute baths, so things got a little tense. Also, I have a problem with sleeping through the night, and when I wake up I usually get up to pee, and it was such a production to go to the other bathroom, what with slippers and glasses and trying not to fall down the plastic-tarp-covered stairs. So the anxiety of anticipating the nighttime pee led to more wakefulness, and thus more need for nighttime pee, and oh I am such an old person. ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALLChicago’s stressful “selective” high school enrollment process is officially over, and to no one’s surprise N had a strong showing with a few offers from which to choose. They were all good schools, but I think the smart choice was made by opting for the school close to our house (literally a 5-minute walk) rather than the one with an hour-plus one-way public transit commute. It would not have been dangerous but it would have been tedious, and Chicago’s winters are dark and unkind, and N is a big fan of YouTube and playing hockey and messing around on guitar, and of course there’s homework and eating dinner and maybe popping back over to school for a play or a basketball game, all of which are much easier if school is close. So yay. The only thing that worries me a bit is that the program is all AP and Honors and I glanced at the English stuff and saw mention of _Beowulf, _and man do I hate me some _Beowulf_. I won’t even be able to help with homework, I’ll just be ranting about how much _Beowulf _sucks. Someone tried to defend it to me once by saying it was the first manuscript discovered that is considered to be written in English, to which I say we should have just quietly shoved that vellum back into the hole in which we found it and waited for the SECOND manuscript considered to be written in English, because _Beowulf_ is pretty terrible. It’s basically an action movie and not even a good one, and the only part I like is when they hang up Grendel’s arm in the mead hall. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that for the upstairs bathroom, a nice big monster arm as decoration or window covering. YOU’RE GONNA WANT TO GET THIS SHIZZ ON YOUR KINDLE RIGHT QUICKSome royal fishery action. Or, if you’re more into periodicals: subscribe to _Portable Restroom Operator_. This is a publication I use a lot when I am trying to convince aspiring young editors that publishing is a VERY wide world, and you probably won’t end up doing something cinematic like reading the slush pile at HarperCollins, but there are scholarly journals and textbook publishers and yes, trade magazines like _Portable Restroom Operator_, and they all need editing. Oh, the places you’ll go! (Literally.) HERE IS SOME NEWSA working crab-powered computer could be possible, because large amounts of crabs swarm in predictable ways. I enjoyed the “Ethical Note” at the end: “Furthermore, on visual inspection, no crabs appeared to have been injured or adversely affected by the experiments.” I’ll give you “injured,” but I don’t know how you can tell that a crab hasn’t been “adversely affected.” Some of these crabs will never trust again! A SAMPLING OF MY STITCH FIX REVIEWSI receive a Stitch Fix box every few months and usually keep at least one thing. It saves me from the retail-world horrors and I am a sucker for anything that claims to be curated or that has a recommendations engine. I am a special snowflake. When you do return something, there’s a bunch of checkbox reasons like “too big,” “poor quality,” “did not like style,” etc, but there’s also an open-text comment box. My goal is to make them regret giving me an open-text comment box.

This looks like a wrinkled old rag. And it made me look like a crazy hobo. Please always err on the side of “structured and tailored” rather than the side of “an unraveling sack, appropriate to wear when cleaning the garage.” Juuuuust on the edge of too much cleavage, but I decided to be brave. YOU’RE WELCOME, WORLD!What the hell am I going to wear with mint-green jeans? I am not entirely sure, but I'm keeping them anyway because they fit so well. Mint-green booty, coming through. Kind of clingy, lumpy, and weird. LIKE YOUR MOM okay sorry I can't resist a mom joke.